Development and Performance of a Multibipolar HTO Electrolysis System

Tritium separation factors are extraordinarily important parameters in the development of efficient electrolysis systems for HTO waste volume reduction and tritium recovery purposes as well as for the reproducible analysis of tritium in low-level environmental samples. In the present work, a modular, actively cooled, continuous feed electrolysis setup has been developed. In order to provide a basis for the analysis of electrode specific tritium separation factors and to investigate the system performance, electrolysis of tritiated water was conducted with constant current density in strongly alkaline medium (1 M sodium hydroxide) using platinum as reference electrode material. Furthermore, the energy saving potential of an increase of the number of cell compartments was investigated.